I am almost done with the final edits to the 2009 ASMA Study, which will be released at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville.

Tonight I decided to to read what other industry professionals have said about the the 34 website providers that I am reviewing.

What I found was odd from an Automotive IRM perspective.

The IRM Buzz

Car industry consultants and software providers have been quick to claim the benefits of posting positive customer reviews online, also known as IRM.

Articles are coming out each week stating the importance of Internet Reputation Management (IRM).

When you look at www.DrivingSales.com  Vendor Reviews, one of the few places that post automotive industry vendor reviews, the numbers are telling.

The children of the shoemaker have holes in their shoes!

Let’s see why.

Automotive Website Vendor Reviews

• Dealer.com has 14,000 dealers using their software and has the most customer reviews and the best scores in this category but a measly 44 dealers posted their comments. That’s less than 1%. (36 Positive / 8 Negative)
• BZ/ADP have over 2,000 dealers using their platforms and only 15 review, less than 1%. (5 positive / 10 negative)
• Dealerskins – 11 Reviews (5 positive/ 6 negative)
• Reynolds & Reynolds – 9 Reviews (5 positive / 4 negative)
• eBizAutos has zero reviews.

www.DrivingSales.com and www.DealerRefresh.com  are two places where dealer website platforms and vendors can be reviewed. On both websites, the representation is the same, very few customers have posted positive reviews.

eBizAutos also has no reviews on DealerRefresh.com nor any I could find doing and Internet search.

As DrivingSales.com grows, I believe it will become to premier place for automotive vendors to be evaluated and scored by the automotive community.

If IRM is good for car dealers, then IRM is good for car dealer vendors and suppliers.

The PCG Digital Marketing (PCG) will be publishing our annual white paper report on Automotive Search Marketing Architecture this November.

The ASMA study will identify automotive website providers that offer SEO compliant platforms using Google’s guidelines as well as best practices in the search marketing industry. All automotive website providers are invited to participate in our study.

The PCG Digital Marketing’s 2009 ASMA white paper will be released in time for the 2009 Digital Dealer Conference in Nashville which takes place November 1-3.   The Digital Dealer Conference is the automotive industry’s premier tradeshow which focuses on the latest trends in automotive digital marketing.

The 2009 ASMA study will evaluate and assign rankings to car dealer website platforms based on key components that represent the best in search engine optimization (SEO) architecture and consumer search experience.  These study parameters are established by Brian Pasch, CEO of the PCG Digital Marketing.

For many car retailers, their inventory pages make up over 85% of the total content pages on their website.  Organic search optimization and search ranking are heavily skewed to reward good content and good SEO architecture.  The report is designed to provide car dealers with an independent view of website platform technology as it relates to organic search marketing.

Last year, the 2008 ASMA report reviewed over 16 automotive platforms with only 2 providers receiving a perfect score for SEO compliance. In the past year car dealer website providers have released or announced many changes to their platforms which should make this year’s report even more interesting.

2009 ASMA Logo

A new element to this year’s study will be an official ASMA logo which will be awarded to automotive website providers that rank at the top of their peer group.  The ASMA logo will allow leaders in the field of automotive website design to proudly display their award on their marketing materials and on their websites. The ASMA logo will represent the best in SEO architecture for the automotive industry.

Automotive website providers who would like to participate in the review must submit three working websites which utilize their latest technology to the PCG Digital Marketing by 9-30-09.  Dealer software providers who do not submit examples of their technology may still be included in the report.  However, the website PCG reviews will be based on those found randomly on the Internet or referenced on their company websites.

Dealer software providers can contact Brian Pasch at info@paschconsulting.com for more information.

About the Digital Dealer Conference

The annual Digital Dealer Conference attracts hundreds of dealership attendees that are looking to learn more about Internet and technology-related issues.  Speakers who are experts in the field of Automotive Digital Marketing present seminars which help forward thinking dealerships stay ahead of the ever changing technology curve.   For registration or sponsorship opportunities, visit http://www.digitaldealerconference.com/

Automotive Car Marketing Websites

Over the last six months I have been testing the value of publishing car inventory listings to a group of free websites. The idea behind this test was to measure the effectiveness of the efforts needed to post cars based on the increase of:

1. Car Sales
2. Web Traffic
3. Inbound Links

This is Part One of a series of articles that I plan to write tracking the success of various free listing services.  This is the introductory article and some initial results for our testing which is showing a clear front runner.

We were also interested in this project because it would give us some data on consumer interest and behavior on social networking websites and stand alone car marketing portals.   To keep automotive marketing budgets as effective as possible, we want to know where to invest time and resources.

Dealer Owned Car Marketing Portals

As a side note, we see a growing trend for car dealer groups to create their own regional car sales portals, to compete with sites like Cars.com and Autotrader.com.   Specifically, larger dealer groups that have multiple brands under their management in any given state can build very effective direct car marketing website at a reasonable cost.  There is a debate out there that questions why any dealer would create their own used car site even if they had multiple locations.

 Each dealer project has to be evaluated on a case by case basis.  Our experience has demonstrated that a strong domain name and a good inventory platform can be an effective in-state lead generation tool for a larger dealer organization or a friendly group of dealers.

Car Websites Included in Testing

Our testing has included a number of websites, listed below:

1. Vast.com
2. Google Base
3. Craigslist
4. BackPage.com
5. AOL Autos
6. MyRide.com

We have created a tool that can post automobiles from existing car dealer inventory feeds to these sites.  To date we have some clear winners and some clear losers but testing will continue.   To see the impact of this added traffic on PageRank and Inbound links is not something that can be immediately measured and the initial data is somewhat vague so I will have to create a second update.

Craigslist is the clear front runner by a mile for generating web referral traffic.  The effectiveness of Craigslist for generating inquires is undeniable but some of our clients feel that the quality of the leads is not great.  I have also noticed that the bounce rate is higher for Craigslist that other web referrers.

 Internet lead quality is often a reflection of the clarity of your ad and the information you provide.  We suggest that your Craigslist ad be as specific as possible so as to minimize the chatter between consumers and your Internet sales staff for basic things that should be included in your free listing.

Second in traceable traffic is Google Base, but this is not consistent across the country.  Traffic from Google Base comes into Google Analytics as a “Google.com referral”.  This is not a clean measure since there are a few other referring sites that can come in under this category.  We will be doing some better tracking on this matter.

The traffic from Backpage.com has been insignificant and disappointing.   The VAST.COM network of listings is looking promising and may in fact be better than Google Base, but more testing is needed.  There will be a second part to this article as more data is collected.

Craigslist.com is the clear winning for generating extra calls and traffic to your dealer website to date. If car dealers need help posting their cars to Craigslist, please give us a call.